Monkey Kingdom documentary review: growing up in the jungle
Simplistic, but a charming and child-friendly introduction to our cousins in the wild that no zoo could provide, with a monkey heroine whom kids will cheer.
adventure
The Revenant movie review: an extreme walk in the woods
High-toned body horror that emotionally and tonally starts on one note and never deviates from it, which becomes rather exhaustingly dull.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie review: a new hope
Charts a path to a future that refuses to get mired in nostalgia. Yet all the Star Wars notes are here, remixed into a glorious new arrangement.
In the Heart of the Sea movie review: here be monsters (and whales)
Solid, old-school man-versus-nature adventure melodrama, with a simmering green awareness; rollicking, smart, breathtaking, and sobering.
Sherpa documentary review: go tell it on the mountain (LFF 2015)
Captures a burgeoning revolutionary spirit among a people who have been ignored, when they aren’t being taken advantage of, for too long.
The Good Dinosaur movie review: bad dinosaur, bad
Shamefully banal; such a confused mess that I cannot even figure out what the title is supposed to mean. A slap in the face to Pixar fans after Inside Out.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 movie review: breaking the blockbuster
One of the smartest and most enthralling SF film series ever breaks more new ground as it ends on notes as emotional and provocative as they are explosive.
Spectre movie review: Bond goes backward
After a truly spectacular and fresh opening sequence, everyone might as well be enacting a Bond puppet show, which is sometimes unpleasantly retro-icky.
Goosebumps movie review: stick with the books (LFF 2015)
More theme-park attraction than movie, and paradoxically distastefully self-congratulatory about the Goosebumps phenomenon and insulting toward its author.
Pan movie review: a disaster of fantastically epic proportions
An embarrassingly empty pastiche of numerous beloved action blockbusters, all frenetic action and soulless mishmashes of fantasy imagery.
